Hoje é dia do escritor e quero compartilhar algumas aspas do meu escritor, Kazuo Ishiguro.
Em 2021, o Kazão foi a esse podcast britânico bem bobinho chamado How to Fail with Elizabeth Day e disse coisas incríveis. A proposta do podcast era trazer um prêmio Nobel e mostrar como ele é gente como a gente — com fracassos e constrangimentos como os nossos —, e como você, ouvinte, também pode ter um Nobel escondido no peito.
O Kazão estava lá para vender seu livro mais recente — Klara e o Sol — e cumpriu seu papel na pauta do dia de maneira exemplar, respondendo com gentileza e elegância às perguntas mais abestalhadas, mostrando curiosidade a respeito da entrevistadora e retomando o tema do programa quando começava a devanear.
Então você me trouxe até aqui pra falar de Síndrome do Impostor? Do brinquedo que esqueci no Japão quando minha família se mudou para a Inglaterra, há mais de 60 anos? Quer que eu esclareça pela quadragésima centésima vez se é verdade que escrevi Os Vestígios do Dia em quatro semanas? Kazão não julga, Kazão responde.
Mas, já que estamos aqui, por que não questionar o sentido da escrita de ficção? Vamos nos perguntar se isso que eu faço da vida serve para alguma coisa, e se essa coisa para a qual isso serve é necessariamente boa.
Já que o tema é fracasso, então vamos falar do meu fracasso pessoal enquanto escritor por não ter mapeado a existência dos sentimentos que originaram o Brexit e a eleição de Trump antes que eles se concretizassem e explodissem na minha cara. A sociedade me alimentou, me deu espaço e tempo livre para que eu supostamente pensasse sobre as coisas, sobre o mundo, entendesse um pouco mais o que está rolando por aqui, e eu cometi o imenso fracasso de não desconfiar de nada. Um fracasso de visão, de curiosidade, de imaginação, de empatia. Eu achava que estava falando sobre a condição humana, mas essas pessoas certamente não estavam na conta, porque eu nem sabia que existiam.
O Kazão toma para si uma responsabilidade que não vi mais ninguém tomar, e o faz com uma sinceridade, com um humor e com uma singeleza que vou te contar…
Sobre a serventia da literatura:
Some of the things that have been happening in the world in recent years do lead me to actually wonder what is the purpose of writing novels and putting them out there? Is it that important? In fact, have we been contributing to something that's a bit dodgy, given the way we seem to have shifted over on emotions rather than truth and fact? This idea that what you feel is what matters. You can if you feel it, then it's true.
I'm kind of wondering if the huge emphasis I've always put in my work on being able to communicate through emotions and to relate to readers emotionally, is that a sound way to be going about things that kind of larger level? I've often thought, you know, is this thing what I do? Is it just some sort of cultural accident that it's been given a certain place in the hierarchy of things and I get given prizes and knighthoods and things, but actually that's just some sort of historical and cultural accident. And is it actually so valuable? Is it actually contributing to something, a drift away from truth and a kind of dispassionate way of looking at things?
Sobre a cegueira em relação a fenômenos recentes como o Brexit e o trumpismo:
Well, it was very much triggered by those two things. There were wake up calls. And it's not to say that I haven't moved to a position of thinking or the people who wanted Brexit were correct. And I was ignorant about all their reasons for wanting to leave Europe or that Trump supporters are correct. People who voted for Trump back then in 2016, you were correct to do so. And how ignorant of me not to have understood how they felt. That's not my position, but I didn't even know that they were there. I didn't know these feelings were there. I didn't even start to ask why so many people might feel that way. So I wasn't even at the stage of asking questions like, have they been fooled? Have they been tricked? Are they being ignorant or are they correct? Is there some massive failure on the part of the establishment that has ignored them? I realized that I wasn't even anywhere near asking these questions.
Maybe most people wouldn't feel too bad about that. But this is supposed to be part of my job, part of my remit. I've been allowed not to commute every day to go into an office or do whatever, because I'm supposed to sit around and think I get given these awards and things because I'm supposed to have some sort of an insight into the world and society and how people relate to each other and human relationships. And so I did feel this wherever this came from, whatever this was, I couldn't get away from the fact that this was a colossal failure of vision on my part.
Whatever I've been writing about in my novels. And whenever I try to say, yes, this is about the universal human condition or whatever. Well, I certainly wasn't taking all this into account in the universal human condition as I was portraying it, trying to convey it was a failure to understand fully human beings in a very everyday sense.
Sobre a esposa dele, Lorna Ishiguro:
Oh, she's vital to the creative process. You have to understand that for one reason or another. We've been together for 40 years. And so she knew me before I was a writer. You know, when we met, I hadn't written anything. I was a would be singer songwriter. And so she was there criticizing the very first things I wrote on paper and saying, “you know what? What was this? Do you reckon you're a writer because you've written this?”
I mean, so, you know, stories, whatever. I mean, she was the first person to look at them, scrutinize them, say which ones were good, which ones weren't. And so I've kind of got used to that. I mean, she's a very good critic and editor. But the important thing is I know where she's coming from. I know when to ignore her and where not to ignore her. Most of the time I don't ignore her because I get in real trouble if I do ignore her.
And I mean, it's almost second nature to me, you know, that she's part of the team. Sometimes you get these musical duos that are nevertheless their act is named after just one person. Like a person I really admire at the moment is Gillian Welch, the American singer. But actually they are a couple: they are Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, but it's a two person act with one name. The band name is Gillian Welch and I kind of feel it. It's a little bit like that with me and my wife. She doesn't just edit afterwards. I mean, she sometimes gives me the ideas to start with.
não conhecia. por onde você recomenda que eu comece a lê-lo?
Incrível